Shakspere and Montaigne | Page 6

before any audience, but of grave and discreete persons.'
However, like all previous ordinances, proclamations, and Acts of
Parliament, this one also remained without effect. The dramatists and
the disciples of the mimic art continued busying themselves, in their
customary bold manner, with that which awakened the greatest interest
among the public at large; and one would think that at a certain time
they had become a little power in the State, against which it was no
longer possible to proceed in arbitrary fashion, but which, on the
contrary, had to be reckoned with.
Only such measures, it appears, were afterwards passed which were
calculated to harmonise the religious views uttered on the stage with
the tenets of the Established Church. This follows from a letter of Lord
Burleigh, addressed, in 1589, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in
which he requests him to appoint 'some fytt person well learned in
divinitie.' The latter, together with the Master of the Revels and a
person chosen by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, were to form
a kind of Commission, which had to examine all pieces that were to be
publicly acted, and to give their approval.

It would be an error to believe that this threefold censorship had any
greater success than the former measures. The contrary was the case;
matters rather became worse. Actors were imprisoned; whereupon they
drew up beautiful petitions to their august protectors who brought about
their deliverance--that is, until they were once more clapped into prison.
Then they were threatened with having their ears and noses cut off; [11]
but still they would not hold their tongues. We know from a letter of
the French ambassador (1606)--who himself had several times to ask at
the Court of James I. for the prohibition of pieces in which the Queen
of France and Mademoiselle Verneuil, as well as the Duke of Biron,
were severely handled--that the bold expounders of the dramatic art
dared to bring their own king on the stage. Upon this there came an
ordinance forbidding all further theatrical representations in London.
In the words of the French ambassador:--'I caused certain players to be
forbid from acting the history of the Duke of Biron. When, however,
they saw that the whole Court had left the town, they persisted in acting
it; nay, they brought upon the stage the Queen of France and
Mademoiselle de Verneuil.... He (the King) has upon this made order
that no play shall henceforth be acted in London; for the repeal of
which order they (the players) have offered 100,000 livres. Perhaps the
permission will be again granted, but upon condition that they represent
no recent history, nor speak of the present time.' [12]
From this sum--a very large one at that time--the importance of the
theatre of those days may be gathered.
The Corporation of the City of London was among those most hostile
to all theatrical representations. It exerted itself to the utmost in order to
render them impossible in the centre of the capital; issuing, with that
object, the most whimsical decrees. Trying, on their part, to escape
from the despotic restrictions, the various players' companies settled
down beyond the boundary of the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. The
citizens of London, wishing to have their share of an amusement which
had become a national one, eagerly flocked to Bankside, to Blackfriars,
to Shoreditch, or across green fields to the more distant Newington
Butts.

Comparatively speaking, very little has come down to us from the
hey-day of the English drama. That which we possess is but an
exceedingly small portion of the productions of that epoch. Henslowe's
'Diary' tells us that a single theatre (Newington Butts) in about two
years (June 3, 1594, to July 18, 1596) brought out not less than forty
new pieces; and London, at that time, had already more than a dozen
play-houses. The dramas handed down to us are mostly purged of those
passages which threatened to give offence in print. The dramatists did
not mean to write books. When they went to the press at all, they often
excused themselves that 'scenes invented merely to be spoken, should
be inforcibly published to be read.' They were well aware that this
could not afford to the reader the same pleasure he felt 'when it was
presented with the soule of living action.' [13]
The stage was the forum of the people, on which everything was
expressed that created interest amidst a great nation rising to new life.
The path towards political freedom of speech was not yet opened in
Parliament; and of our important safety-valve of to-day, the public
press, there was yet only the first vestige, in the shape of pamphlets
secretly hawked about. The stage as rapidly decayed as it had grown,
when the